The questions raged all offseason: Could Missouri be good enough on defense to give itself a chance to be a good team? Most didn’t feel the Tigers had to be great…just better than it has been.
While Tennessee-Martin and Wyoming will hardly be the Tigers’ toughest defensive tests this season, they are the only two that have presented themselves so far. And the Tigers have passed them both.
“Obviously a lot higher,” middle linebacker Cale Garrett said when asked about the defense’s confidence. “You feed off the success that you’re having and you’re going to want to improve it even more. What we’ve done a good job of is looking at the positives and then growing on that and also taking those negatives and try to eliminate those mistakes and not let them happen again.”
Mizzou has had momentary lapses in the first two games, but for the most part has shut down overmatched opponents. Wyoming had just 84 yards of total offense and seven first downs in the first half on Saturday night. By the time the Tiger offense had found its footing and the Cowboys managed to put a field goal on the board in the third quarter, Mizzou had built a three-score lead.
“Defensively, I thought they started exceptional,” head coach Barry Odom said.
Mizzou may have taken the foot off the gas a little bit in the second half. Wyoming ended up with 248 total yards. But that was 29 fewer than Tennessee-Martin managed a week ago and most of them came after the game was decided. The Tigers should be in the top 30 nationally in total defense and scoring defense by the time the weekend’s games are complete.
“I think we just need to keep doing what we’re doing,” safety Khalil Oliver said. “We can’t get too high or too low on any game.”
Oliver jump-started Saturday night’s effort recovering a fumble forced by Terez Hall on Wyoming’s first possession. The Tigers also forced eight Cowboy punts and had seven tackles behind the line of scrimmage.
After showing almost nothing against Tennessee-Martin—Missouri blitzed fewer than five times in week one—the Tigers got a little more exotic on Saturday. Hall ended Wyoming’s first drive with a hurry on a blitz. Missouri brought some pressure with secondary blitzes throughout the night as well.
“We were able to get some pressure on the quarterback,” Odom said. “Did a lot of really good things creatively on third down that gave us a chance to get off the field.”
“You have to show something different man,” Hall said. “You can’t just be coming in with the same plan. You got to throw something different on there. They ain’t never seen that blitz before.
“It went well.”
The Cowboys were without their leading rusher. They started a redshirt freshman quarterback who doesn’t have a lot of weapons that can stretch the field against an SEC defense. In no way did they prove that they have arrived or that they can carry the Tigers if the offense goes dormant for a week.
But they’ve been a lot better than they were in the first half of the season a year ago. And, at this point, that’s all they can prove.
“They understand what our team is right now and they understand the importance of how we need to play defensive football,” Odom said while heaping praise on defensive coordinator Ryan Walters. “It hasn’t been perfect, but they’ve put together two really good plans.”
Stiffer tests will come. For the first time in a while, Missouri’s defense looks like it might be equipped to handle them.
“I like us against anybody when we’re playing our best,” Garrett said. “And I thought we were playing pretty close to our best tonight.”
